Dismantling DEI Is About Making America White Again, Lewis Warns

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Baptist News Global | Feb. 18, 2025

Donald Trump’s prohibition of government diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with subduing marginalized communities, pastor, activist and author Jacqui Lewis said during a recent episode of “The State of Belief” podcast.

Barring of Black History Month observances in federal agencies this year resulted from the president’s January executive order ending DEI programs and further illuminates the racist intent of the MAGA movement, said Lewis, senior minister at Middle Collegiate Church in New York City and co-author of The Just Love Story Bible, set for release in September. Middle Collegiate Church is an interdenominational congregation affiliated with both the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ.

Also prohibited are observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Juneteenth and Holocaust Remembrance Day, NBC News reported.

“With all the lies about making America great again, what we really mean is ‘making America white again,’ we mean rolling back the clock to the good-old-boy days where your life didn’t matter, where my life didn’t matter, where indigenous lives didn’t matter and the only lives that counted were white, straight and wealthy lives,” Lewis said during the podcast hosted by Interfaith Alliance President Paul Raushenbush.

“We are not a democracy right now,” Lewis said. “We know that’s true. And I’m so pissed off, I’m so mad about all the people who would pull a lever for this fascist racist because maybe they thought their eggs would be cheaper, which they are not. Or maybe they thought the economy would be stronger, which it is not. And maybe they thought there was something in it for them without imagining it isn’t there for their neighbor.”

“The true underbelly of white supremacy and its vestiges are on full display, and it breaks my soul.”

Then consider what may be coming next, she added. “Imagine four years of this blatant doubling down on disrupting the human rights, the civil rights that have been won in these last decades. The true underbelly of white supremacy and its vestiges are on full display, and it breaks my soul, to be honest.”

The attempt to undermine marginalized communities also is evident in the administration’s intent to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, which helps provide educational opportunities regardless of race. And book bans and forbidding the teaching of racial history are other avenues of discrimination, Raushenbush said. “I could go on and on.”

Dismantling DEI is an outright attack against people of color, Lewis declared. “Diversity, equity and inclusion, that’s code in the mouth of the president for Black people. For Black people, diversity, equity and inclusion are hard-won policies and practices and procedures to protect disabled people, all queer people, female identified people, Black people, indigenous people, white poor people, people who have been disenfranchised on so many axes of identity. Diversity, equity and inclusion is about all of us.”

There also is a faith dimension to DEI, she added. “This diversity, equity, inclusion concept is very biblical. That everyone should belong, that everyone should have a place, and that everyone should get along are concepts located not only in our Scripture but in almost all the world’s major religions.”

Each of those traditions have some form of “love they neighbor as thyself,” Lewis explained. “Islam says, ‘Don’t withhold from someone what you need for yourself,’ Christianity has, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Judaism says, ‘Love the stranger because you were once strangers.’ The Sikh tradition says, ‘Don’t do anything to break another’s heart’ — and look at us, look at this so-called Christian nation parading out white nationalism in the name of the brown Palestinian Jew.”

“Black people, we have been here. We have walked through the fire.”

But faith will get Black Americans through the current white supremacist onslaught just as it did for the “spiritual geniuses” of previously disenfranchised generations, Lewis said. “They had a kind of spirituality that was transcendent and eminent at the same time: ‘Jesus is my friend,’ ‘Jesus is a rock in a weary land,’ ‘Jesus is a shelter in the time of storm.’ It was an ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’ Christology and theology.’”

The Resurrection was proof to them that lynching could not keep God from working in the world through Jesus Christ, she said. “Black people, we have been here. We have walked through the fire. And we rise up because of the faith of our ancestors. We are sustained by the music and the joy and the power of Black worship. But we are also sustained by a community that knows that we are rooted and that we are connected, and that together we can do more than we can apart.”

Raushenbush asked Lewis how podcast listeners can help those who are hurting.

Practicing self-care is critical because tuning into the body and soul is necessary in enduring these stressful times, she said. “It’s not good for us not to understand we are flesh and need to love our flesh.”

Then it’s time to pay attention to neighbors, she advised. “Wrap your arms around the most vulnerable in your community and ask them what they need. Do they need money for medicine? Do they need access to care? Do they need a safe haven? Do they need a chance to cry and rage?”

Jeff Brumley is Senior News Writer for Baptist News Global. A veteran newspaper reporter, he lives in Jacksonville, Fla., with his dog, Nosey.